Foremost among those reasons, of course, was the fact that Will had stepped forward and declared himself as he did that day when he took the English paymasters’ gold from the Archbishop. No one had ever stood up boldly in the face of both Church and state and declared himself to be representing and defending the common folk of Scotland, and word of it spread throughout the land like fire in dry grass.
The nobility condemned him, of course, but everyone else dismissed that as unimportant, for in their view, by their indifference to what was happening to their countrymen, the nobility had abdicated their right to take offence. What was significant was that Wallace’s action lit a fire in the breasts of the countless hundreds of ordinary men who had grown sick of the incessant bullying and chronic injustice bred of the system they were forced to live under. In a development that no one could have foreseen, they chose, overwhelmingly, to join William Wallace in his forest domain and to stand beside him as free men, beholden to no masters and responsible for their own destiny.
It was this burgeoning of small but vibrant communities within the greenwood that led to my being delegated to work there as a priest, ministering to the needs of Will’s followers. I had returned quickly to Glasgow and Bishop Wishart after the raid on the English paymasters’ wagons, bearing tidings of the outcome of my mission to Will, and His Grace had listened, stone faced. When I had finished my report, he nodded once, thanked me, and dismissed me. Had anyone asked me later, even under torture, to describe his reaction to what I had told him, I would not have been able to say.
Then word came to us, with all the condemnatory wrath of an outraged clergy, of a heinous crime against a nameless bishop during the prosecution of his divine duties. That report spoke of the impious and blasphemous theft of unnamed but invaluable Church property. I had been back for two weeks by then, so it was evident to both the Bishop and me that people had spent considerable time colluding on the details of what had actually happened and what would be released for public consumption. Once again, Bishop Wishart listened grim faced and offered no comment.
Two weeks after that, though, during the Friday-evening communal meal in the cathedral refectory, when I was deep in thought and shamelessly ignoring the droning voice of the visiting friar who was reading that evening’s scriptural selection, I was interrupted by one of the secretariat and summoned immediately into the Bishop’s presence.
He was alone in a corner by his window when I arrived, sitting with his feet propped up on a cushioned stool and tapping a flattened, much-misshapen scroll against his chin as he stared into the blackness beyond the window’s tiny, diamond-shaped panes. He looked up at me and grunted, then waved for me to pull forward another chair and join him, and as soon as I was seated he handed me the scroll. Someone had flattened it roughly, cracking its seal in folding it to fit into a pouch or pocket. I unfolded it and immediately recognized Will’s penmanship, which made me smile.
“Does this not make you wish, my lord, that everyone was capable of being his own scribe? How much clearer everything would be, were that the case.”
“Aye, but wishing for that would be a waste of God’s time, Father James, for such never will be the case. Your cousin is one of the three or four literate men I know outside of our clerical ranks. Read it.”
The missive was brief and to the point: in the space of a month, Will had written, the situation in the greenwood had changed greatly. People had begun to gather there from every direction, lured by the promise of freedom, whatever that might be, and their numbers were growing daily and showing no signs of abating. He had underscored freedom, but aside from adding whatever that might be, he spent no more time attempting to define what they were seeking. He and his people were coping, he wrote. Food was plentiful, and they had made sure people were living far from the main road, deep in the forest and beyond reach of attack.
The largest need he could foresee, Will wrote, was for priests. He had a few people among his followers with rudimentary knowledge of the healing crafts, but not one single monk or priest. Children were already being born, elders were dying, and young people were exchanging marriage vows. He needed priests now, he said, to live among his people and minister to them.
I lowered the letter and looked wordlessly at Bishop Wishart, who was staring back at me. He had pouted his lips and was picking and plucking at them with a fingertip.
“You want me to go.”
He stopped what he was doing and sat up straight, removing his feet from the stool. “Aye,” he said. “At once. Take Declan and Jacobus with you. They can both use the experience to advantage. They will be in your charge and will answer to you as their superior.”